Reconstructing Andrew Jackson: Prospective Elementary Teachers' Readings of Revisionist History Texts

This exploratory study examined how the reading of two revisionist history text accounts concerning President Andrew Jackson influenced the historical interpretations and understandings of two prospective elementary teachers, who at the time also were teaching history during their final internship semester. We begin by providing some of the historical background that the texts traverse, describe the texts and the specific readings themselves, and situate both with regard to the two prospective teachers who were the study's readers. We then describe the reading task and the analytic procedures used to make sense of the teachers' verbal-reports about their reading. The data for each reader is presented as a vocalization trail. This trail starts at the beginning of each reader's encounters with the texts. It then follows that reading to the end. The analysis and discussion focuses on the key verbalizations related to how the readers emerged from the experience with reconstructed understandings from the texts. The results suggest that rhetorically powerful revisionist history texts may have the capacity to re-narrativize the thinking of prospective teachers who are intellectually curious about and receptive to new ideas about the past. Implications for learning to teach history in diverse, urban public schools and for how that learning is provided in teacher education programs are discussed, and questions for further research also are considered.